Bolton saves his best for his book deal … not the country

The more I think of John Bolton, the angrier I become.

Yes, I have plenty of anger at Donald Trump, for whom Bolton worked as national security adviser for 17 months before being fired … or before he resigned. That’s a given, you know?

My anger at Bolton stems from what he could have said a year ago, when the House of Representatives began discussing seriously whether to impeach Trump on abuse of power. Bolton, after all was “In The Room Where It Happened,” and has written a memoir of that title.

The truth is that Bolton hasn’t said anything that millions of us either knew or suspected all along about Trump.

He could have spilled the beans on what he saw and heard. He chose to remain silent while the House prepared its impeachment articles to present to the Senate, which put Trump on trial for abusing the power of his office and for obstructing Congress.

House and Senate Republicans — except for Sen. Mitt Romney — exhibited profound cowardice by refusing to accept the obvious, that Donald Trump had abused the immense power of his office and obstructed Congress’s efforts to get at the truth.

They were led, in my view, toward their cowardly den by John Bolton. He choked. He could have laid it out there in vivid detail. Bolton could have subjected himself to harsh questioning by Trump’s sycophantic supporters and, more than likely, held his own.

He didn’t do that. Instead, he chose to save himself for the release of his book, from which he intends to make a healthy fortune.

I wanted a reason to cheer Bolton. I find myself jeering him. It’s not that he fits my ideal for public service. I dislike his world view. However, we keep hearing about what tough dude he is, how principled he remains, how he wouldn’t be intimidated by Donald Trump.

It all sounds like so much crap now.

Would any of this changed the minds of GOP senators and House members who gave Trump a pass on the crimes he committed? Probably not nearly enough to turn acquittal into conviction in the Senate.

It simply offends and galls me terribly that John Bolton is getting all this exposure now, that the media are slobbering all over this guy just because he’s telling us now what he should have disclosed much earlier … when it really mattered.